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The Editorial Prologue to the First Issue of Changing Work

The following was published as a prolog to the first issue of Changing Work, a print magazine predecessor to the GEO Newsletter.

EDITORIAL PROLOGUE: Another Magazine?

WELCOME to Changing Work! But – a fair question – why yet another magazine? How will Changing Work be different?

For one thing, there is no magazine with our special focus, which touches almost everyone, on the transformation of worklife – a focus differently illustrated in this issue by the O&O Supermarket takeovers, nurses in transition, and the Nicaraguan cooperatives.

Secondly, Changing Work has distinctive aims: to provide a forum for sustained dialogue on the goals and strategies of reconstructing work (e.g., on how worklife can be made not only more democratic, but a source of joy and creativity); to help build solidarity among the often disconnected groups seeking to increase democracy at work; to foster alliances between these groups and others with allied goals, such as labor, ecological, and health care groups; and to develop collaboration on changing work across national boundaries. Moreover, these broad aims will be pursued concretely and with continuity; e.g., through our regular and staff-coordinated department: Co-op Ed, European Scene, Resources, Corporate Watchdog, Health Care Work in Transition.

Third, we think Changing Work addresses some crucial neglected concerns of an unusually diverse range of people. We see it reaching not only readers already experienced in “worker ownership” and “democratic management”, but those who have felt what Studs Terkel called the “violence” of mainstream work, and have just begun to consider alternatives. No less important, our magazine will work to develop an especially active relationship with our readers; we want (see Special Message, “Join us in Changing Work”, p. 61) our audience to become contributors of both written and graphic material, and we’ll provide editorial support when they do.

Fourth, our politics will be clear, evolving, and aimed at nurturing a vision of liberated worklife, and at combining that vision with practical, shorter-term resources and steps towards its realization.

Last, we will work at these ambitious plans with humor as well as seriousness, with colorful graphics as well as bold politics, and with a dancing as well as resolute spirit.